Current Projects
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3-Dimensional, Real-Time Traffic Monitoring (Virtual Helicopter) - This research explores an approach to making traffic management systems more interactive and intuitive via dynamic 3-D visualization. Our effort used a combination of OpenGL and other modeling techniques to develop a scalable, highly interactive 3D model... More |
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3-Dimensional, Traffic Data Spatial and Temporal Graphing - Transportation data is inherently spatial in nature; however, most archived transportation data systems display transportation data in only a temporal format... More |
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3-Dimensional, Virtual Commute Fly-Over - This research expands upon the 3-dimensional, virtual helicopter research to automatically create fly-over videos of typical commuter routes. These fly-overs would update themselves automatically at some predetermined interval to show travelers road conditions along their routes. |
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Automated Small Vehicle Transportation (ASVT)- The Kansas State University in cooperation with PRT Consulting, the University of Maryland's Center for Advanced Transportation Technology, and Kansas University has embarked on a third phase of ASVT research to investigate the potential of ASVT to solve transportation and mobility issues in a specific environment... More |
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Automated TMC Performance Measurement System - Fundamental functions of a transportation management center (TMC) include monitoring traffic conditions, responding to incidents, and generally improving the quality of transportation... More |
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Bluetooth Traffic Monitoring Technology - Beginning in late 2007 the University of Maryland, with support from the Maryland State Highway Administration, developed an anonymous probe technique to monitor the travel time on highways and arterials based on signals available from the point-to-point networking protocol commonly referred to as Bluetooth. The majority of consumer electronic devices produced today come equipped with Bluetooth wireless capability to communicate with other devices in close proximity... More |
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CHART Support - CATT staff provides on-going support to the Maryland State Highway Administration’s CHART traffic management system. A broad range of services are provided including collaboration on system acquisition strategies, oversight of CHART system development, and supervision of the system enhancement and maintenance. Members of the Civil Engineering Department faculty also provide support and are responsible for the periodic evaluation of the effectiveness of emergency service patrol operations on the State highway system... More |
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CITE Blended-Learning Courses - In spite of the many benefits of web-based courses, many students miss the personal interaction with the instructor and other students. Blended learning combines web-based courses with other types of more traditional instruction... More |
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Evacuation Planning - Hurricanes are a potential problem for Maryland’s eastern shore, because of the need to evacuate large populations of residents and tourists using a few routes with limited capacity. Working through the CATT, Civil Engineering Department faculty have developed an advanced traffic operations tool that can be used to effectively manage the evacuation in real-time, by monitoring traffic flow, estimating changes in demand, and examining the impact of alternate strategies. Potential strategies include traffic signal retiming, diversion and information dissemination. The tool permits the user to enter alternative strategies, and evaluate their impact using an integrated set of applications including simulation, displays of traffic conditions, and other forms of visualization that permit rapid comprehensive of system status. |
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Graphical Incident Timeline Generation (Real-Time and Archived)- This research is developing methods for visualizing incident data in an interactive, timeline fashion. This tool generates a graphical timeline of incidents from real-time and archived regional TMC data... More |
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The I-95 Corridor Coalition is an alliance of transportation agencies, toll authorities, and related organizations, including law enforcement, from the State of Maine to the State of Florida, with affiliate members in Canada. The Coalition provides a forum for key decision and policy makers to address transportation management and operations issues of common interest. This volunteer, consensus-driven organization enables its myriad state, local and regional member agencies to work together to improve transportation system performance far more than they could working individually. The Coalition has successfully served as a model for multi-state/jurisdictional interagency cooperation and coordination for over a decade. For more information on the 1-95 Corridor Coalition, visit their website. |
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I-95 Corridor Coalition Vehicle Probe Project - Vehicle probe technology is emerging as a means of monitoring traffic without the need for deploying and maintaining equipment in the right-of-way. In contrast to speed sensors, vehicle probes directly measure travel time using data from a portion of the vehicle stream. Commercial vehicle probe data services primarily include the use of cell phones and automated vehicle location (AVL) data. Early demonstrations of such systems relied heavily on a single method or technology. However, services are emerging that combine information from multiple probe sources and technologies, as well as data from existing fixed-sensor networks into a comprehensive traffic information service...more |
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Incident Data Extraction Software - This research strives to develop comprehensive, user friendly online methods for querying and reporting archived incident data to transportation engineers, scientists, and even the public. The system provides information services to help measure the operation and performance of transportation systems and Transportation Management Centers (TMCs). The system will also support traditional and innovative regional transportation analyses. Completed portions of the research tools are already being used by many state-highway engineers, traffic planners, University of Maryland (UMD) researchers, and even students in UMD statistics courses. |
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The Local Technical Assistance Program (LTAP), jointly funded through the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) and the Maryland State Highway Administration (Maryland SHA), provides transportation technology transfer services to agencies concerned with highways in rural and in urbanized areas with a population under one million. The LTAP mission is to stimulate active, progressive, and cost effective transfer of bridge/highway technology and to provide technical assistance to local and urban governments. LTAP accomplishes its mission through a network of LTAP centers (one in each State, one in Puerto Rico, and six that serve Native American Tribal Governments). Each LTAP center maintains mailing lists, publishes a quarterly newsletter and serves as a clearinghouse for transportation information. Also, all LTAP Centers exchange and publish information in a web clearinghouse called LTAP Clearinghouse. For more information about LTAP visit their website. |
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Maryland Statewide ITS Architecture - The Maryland Statewide ITS Architecture has been completed and is available on the ITS Maryland website. The Architecture documentation available on the website represents the first published Statewide Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) Architecture for the State of Maryland. It identifies existing and planned ITS projects across the state and the Architecture "Elements" associated with those projects. It also defines the relationships among the Elements and describes the flow of information between Elements. The Center for Advanced Transportation Technology has been providing technical assistance and project management support for this initiative. |
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MATOC - Transportation officials in the Washington area are working on an initiative called MATOC to address a mutually agreed upon need for managing transportation incidents and emergencies from a regional perspective by reacting cooperatively and effectively to incidents whose effects cross state boundaries, such as major crashes, extended lane closures, transit station closures, hazmat spills, or severe weather. The MATOC vision encompasses a number of identified core capabilities in the areas institutional coordination, system coordination, operational coordination, and public outreach coordination. The Center for Advanced Transportation Technology has been involved in the formative stages of MATOC and has received a $1 million grant under the Department of Homeland Security’s Urban Area Security Initiative to support MATOC implementation. |
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Multi-Agency Transportation System Data Archiving - The CATT Lab is acting as the regional transportation data archiving center for the State of Maryland and Washington Metropolitan area through the RITIS project... More |
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NCHRP 20-7 Guide to Benchmarking Operations Performance Measures - Building upon the National Transportation Operations Coalition initiative from 2004-05 to “define and document a few good measures”, this project refines and advances the performance measures by piloting a number of measures through the cooperation of volunteer organizations. The results from the pilot tests are used to determine the usefulness of the measures, to further refine their definition, and to develop implementation guidelines for the measures... More |
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NCHRP 20-77 Transportation Operations Framework - The objective of the NCHRP 20-77 Transportation Operations Framework is to develop a training and capacity building framework for transportation operations technicians, engineers, and managers. The major outcomes of the project are to determine: what training is needed, what training is currently available, what are the gaps between what training is available and what is needed, and what is the most effective way to deliver the training that is missing? Learn More |
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The Operations Academy is a two-week, total immersion transportation management and operations program. It was developed in response to the increasing demand for personnel with skills in these areas. The program uses a mix of classroom instruction, workshops, and analysis of existing systems to ensure the retention of the principles presented. The academy will provide opportunities to practice and internalize the principles learned which is not possible in traditional classes and short courses. Acceptance to this prestigious program is competitive, and requires the nomination of a local, State or Federal transportation agency. It also requires a commitment on the part of those attending the program to satisfy the pre-study requirements, and to spend two uninterrupted weeks participating in the Academy’s activities. The academy will provide a significant development opportunity to career professionals in transportation management and operations. For more information about the Operations Academy, visit their website. |
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Performance Measures for Mobility - Federal, state and local government agencies are recognizing the importance of performance measures, and using these measures both to evaluate their service delivery, and to communicate more effectively to managers, political leaders and the public. The transportation community is no exception. In recognition of the importance of performance measurement for transportation operations, the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) and the National Transportation Operations Coalition (NTOC) initiated a project for the development of a standardized set of performance measures to be made available to state and local transportation agencies. The work on this project was performed jointly by the University of Maryland and the International City/County Management Association (ICMA). The result of this work was the selection and definition of eleven performance measures to be used for the evaluation of transportation mobility on the nation’s highway system. These measures are intended to serve the purposes of both internal management and external communication. They were developed for evaluation of arterial performance, freeway performance and system-wide performance of the transportation system. |
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Performance Measures for Statewide Congestion - The Maryland State Highway Administration has a requirement for the evaluation of system congestion on a statewide basis. The information produced by this evaluation will be used to communicate with legislators and the public regarding the return received on their highway investment. The application of statewide measures is a particularly challenging task because of the variety of roadways and traffic conditions encountered in a wide geographic area. In addition, it will be important to present the information resulting from the evaluation in a way that can be readily understood by individuals who do not have an engineering background. |
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Real-Time Regional Traffic and Incident Data Feeds - As part of the RITIS project, the CATT Lab will be taking all traffic data from participating agencies and making it comply with the Traffic Management Data Dictionary. The lab will then make this data available via XML, JMS, FTP, RSS, and other methods to both public and private sector users. estimation, travel time prediction, traffic mapping and visualization applications, wireless applications, research, and planning. |
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Real-Time RSS Traffic Feeds - This research takes live traffic and incident data from the RITIS databases and creates an RSS traffic feed that can be subscribed to and viewed by the public. RSS stands for “Really Simple Syndicate” and is often used by the news media to provide important news updates. This service will be available to those with internet computer access, mobile phones, and Internet-enabled PDAs or Blackberries. |
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Regional Integrated Transportation Information System (RITIS) - The Regional Integrated Transportation Information System (RITIS) project is all about improving transportation efficiency, safety, and security through the integration of existing transit and transportation management system data in Virginia, Maryland, and the District of Columbia... More |
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Regional Traffic Mapping - A significant research sub-initiative within the larger RITIS research initiative is to combine all of regional traffic incident data into one regional geo-spatial map that will be made available via the internet to both the public and to the regional public safety agencies. The highlights of this regional traffic map are its interactive characteristics along with its navigation and speed. The map is runs off of a MapServer engine and pulls GIS data directly from a PostGIS database and our RITIS incident feeds. |
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SHA CVISN Support - The Maryland Commercial Vehicle Information System and Networks (CVISN) program supports the safety and service goals of the State’s commercial vehicle operations (CVO) programs in partnership with the private sector. The CATT provides CVISN Systems Architecture and Project Management support to the Maryland State Highway Administration, Motor Carrier Division in its deployment of the PrePass electronic screening program. This deployment has been successfully completed in Perryville, Maryland. The system is being expanded and deployed at four additional locations including: West Friendship, New Market, and Hyattstown, with West Friendship deployment starting in September 2008. A commercial, off-the-shelf Commercial Vehicle Information Exchange Window (CVIEW) has been successfully deployed for state agency use (Maryland State Police, Maryland Transportation Authority Police, Maryland Department of Transportation, Maryland Motor Vehicle Administration, and the Comptroller's Office). This application was expanded to include Heavy Vehicle Permit information in November 2008. The deployment of a Thermal Brake Imaging Infrared Camera System, the first one of its kind in Maryland, was successfully completed in Finzel, Maryland, in late 2008. A pilot Virtual Weigh Station, the first of its kind in Maryland, is also being developed for a location in Dayton (Howard County), and is being implemented in partnership with the Maryland State Police and a commercial scale vendor for completion in Spring/Summer 2009. |
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TMC Operator/Public Safety Dispatcher Forums - The purpose of these Forums are to allow public safety dispatchers and traffic management center (TMC) operators to share lessons learned, best practices, and to identify issues of mutual concern relating to their roles in the incident response process. The goal is enter into a dialogue that enhances existing coordination, cooperation, and communication amongst participating agencies. The Forums are targeted towards dispatchers/operators and/or their first-level supervisors. The Center for Advanced Transportation Technology has been providing project management support for this initiative. |
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Traffic Data Attraction Software (Web-based) - CATT Lab databases continually archive traffic data such as speed, volume, and occupancy. This research strives to develop online methods for querying and reporting. Reporting such archived data to transportation engineers, researchers, and other individuals who need access to traffic data. We are experimenting with various graphical and text-based querying and reporting options and developing a wide variety of tools that transportation engineers, scientists, and even the public can use to make sense of this vast array of data that is collected and stored by traffic management centers. |
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Traffic Signal Timing for Urban Evacuation - Working for the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) CATT and Civil Engineering faculty conducted a research study intended to identify the most effective signal timing procedures to be used during a major “no-notice” evacuation. Using a corridor in Washington, DC, a number of evacuation scenarios were studied under conditions that ranged from a full-scale evacuation of the City, to more limited cases. The study examined evacuation times for various signal timing strategies including flash and the use of very long cycle lengths. Its conclusions are of value to system operators throughout the United States. |
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Travel Time Estimation - The CATT Lab is using its access to real-time traffic sensor data and historical traffic data to predict traffic and travel times along specific corridors. Just as a meteorologist uses models, simulations, and historical weather data to predict rain, snow, and temperature, so the CATT Lab will use historical transportation data to predict traffic, travel times, and even the likelihood of a traffic accident and its affects on the system. |
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Vehicle Tracking Software Development - Though there are several video traffic detection devices that can be purchased from vendors, these devices are expensive, sometimes difficult to configure, they often do not work with pan, tilt, and zoom cameras, and will not work with compressed video feeds. Full motion video is expensive and often not available at the TMC. The CATT Lab is developing a low-cost alternative to these systems that can be used by TMC and research facilities to acquire basic traffic measures such as volume, speed, and incident detection, from compressed video feeds. This software will be run from a PC with a video capture card. |
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